Alberto Núñez Feijóo is angry, very angry. It is not the first time that the Government has attacked him, that it disqualifies him. Already during the first face-to-face between Pedro Sánchez and him, in the Senate, the President of the Government devoted a good part of his speech to attacking him, with the famous phrase that his attitude could only respond to "ignorance or bad faith". ”. But for the president of the PP on Saturday, the Government crossed all the limits of what is allowed in politics, by "manipulating" his words about the homage that, in his opinion, the Government renders to "apprentice autocrats."
Something that for Feijóo is an example of the "authoritarian drift" through which the Government slips, which has stopped governing to try to "finish off the opposition", using all the "legitimate and illegitimate" tools at its disposal, in an attitude , more typical of “authoritarian regimes than of democratic regimes”. If already on Sunday, in Guadalajara, the president of the PP denounced this attempt by the Government to "destroy the opposition", this Monday, at an informative breakfast in which he presented the PP candidate for the presidency of Castilla-La Mancha, Francisco Núñez used the harshest words that the popular leader has used so far, to respond to the Government. This time, he is not going to shut up.
In his speech at the Nueva Economía Forum, Alberto Núñez Feijóo stressed that he sees the government as "very nervous", which is shown by the fact that "it does whatever it takes to try to stay in power at all costs, reaching levels never seen in a democracy". . For the popular leader "it is unprecedented and unheard of in our history and in our European environment, a government that attacks, in the way it is doing, the democratic opposition in Spain."
Feijóo denounced that since August "institutional acts and press conferences of the Council of Ministers, complete, have been dedicated to trying to discredit the opposition." In his opinion, "several female ministers have completely abandoned their government responsibility to dedicate themselves full time to attacking and discrediting the opposition."
But what happened on Saturday, for Feijóo, has crossed all limits in "this institutional drift" by "manipulating" statements and "generating fake news to try to cover up the opposition's criticism" of the Executive. The president of the PP refers to his words about the "autocrats' apprentices", and for this reason he wanted to make his position clear: "According to the Government, that the opposition leader criticizes the government for paying homage to autocratic regimes, something that we have unfortunately seen on several occasions during this legislature, both in members of the Government and in leaders and former leaders of the PSOE and Podemos", the Government converts it "in criticism of the Ibero-American Summit".
Well then, Feijóo showed all the support of the PP for "this and all the Ibero-American summits", and of course for "the presence of the Spanish Government and the presence of the head of state, His Majesty the King". But he warned that this does not mean that he cannot say that "we are not going to support paying homage to autocratic regimes in the last four or five years, with whom unfortunately it seems that some are more comfortable in Spain", and they have done so, he insisted, "both members of the Government and the leader and former leaders of the PSOE and Podemos", in clear reference not only to ministers but also to former President Rodríguez Zapatero, or to the former leader of Podemos, Juan Carlos Monedero.
But Feijóo has not only been hurt by the interpretations or "manipulations" of the Government on the Ibero-American Summit. Also what has been said about him about pensions. "That the leader of the opposition defends that the reform be done with consensus and that it be done in the long term" is translated by the government, he complained, "that the leader of the opposition wants the elderly to be left without a pension." Affirmation, along with that of the Ibero-American Summit, of a government that "has decided to use all possible legitimate and non-legitimate tools to attack the opposition."
That is why he wanted to make clear the position of the PP on pensions. "There is no doubt about our commitment to sustaining pensions, with maintaining purchasing power and ensuring that the system is long-lasting and sustainable." There are others, he stressed, that is, the Government, "those who have on their resume voted in favor of freezing pensions, lowering the remuneration of all public employees and having voted in favor of an adjustment in the multimillion-dollar public spending that affected the decrease in the budget for health, education, and social policies".
Feijóo insisted on his criticism of the pension reform "made without transparency or consensus", and which, in his opinion, punishes workers, penalizes growth and job creation, supposes a mortgage for the new generations and does not guarantee the sustainability". A statement that is not only his, he recalled, but also that of the Bank of Spain and the Independent Tax Authority.
In addition, Feijóo recalled that the "amnesiac Minister Escrivá" said of the rise in prices, which the president of the PP has criticized, that they were already high, six points more than the OECD average, and that any modification "should not imply a change in the prices". For this reason, he returned the disqualifications that the minister directed at him: "Perhaps Mr. Escrivá is irresponsible, frivolous, insolvent and lacking in patriotism."
But these disqualifications are not going to silence the PP: "We are going to continue denouncing what is wrong, maintaining a critical spirit and configuring an alternative", and what the Government does with the opposition "is more typical of authoritarian regimes than democratic ".
